Shawn "Jay Z" Carter has banded together a formation of artists looking to take on the music streaming industry with Tidal, the music streaming company he bought for $56 million. With fierce competition from Spotify, Google, Rdio, and soon Apple, Jay Z has put together an elite list of artists that want the value of music to be recognized again. The group detailed their plans at a media event on Monday evening.
After years of trying to make a dent in the music space with its ill-fated services like Music Unlimited, Sony back in January threw in the towel by announcing a partnership with Spotify, the leading music-streaming service.
Monday, the Japanese company has delivered on that promise with the launch of the new PlayStation Music service with Spotify integration. Available on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 console as well as on Sony's Xperia smartphones and tablets, the service brings 30 million songs to users in 41 markets around the world.
Rdio, the popular Internet radio service, on Tuesday announced three new sharing features in its mobile app for the iPhone and iPad: Share Replies that keep the conversation going, Smarter Sharing via a new Share icon and Tweet the Artist, which automatically puts the artist’s twitter handle in your tweets.
When developer samball told me that there was a new jailbreak tweak in the works, I kept my eyes on Cydia for its appearance. That's because samball is a well-respected developer, and behind such jailbreak releases as CameraTweak. Sam's newest tweak is called Melodic, and it brings some awesome new features—like the ability to share music from your library via AirDrop, Messages, and more—to the stock Music app.
Apple's subscription-based music-streaming service based on Beats technology will not include a free tier supported by advertising akin to iTunes Radio, Re/code reported Friday morning.
This doesn't exclude the possibility of a time-limited trial for new customers, the publication added. According to unnamed sources who have talked to Apple executives, led by SVP Eddy Cue and Beats Music co-founder Jimmy Iovine, the music business “needs to get behind a paywall.”
Apple's rumored subscription music service based on Beats Music and with stock iOS Music app integration will be formally announced at this year's summer developers conference rather than in March, as previously reported.
Although some have hoped Monday's “Spring Forward” media event might serve as a launchpad for the service, Apple is now reportedly planning on introducing it in beta form at its Worldwide Developers Conference in early June, 9to5Mac said Thursday.
If you've ever had the desire to edit the metadata tags for the media content on your iPhone, then TagExplorer is a brand new $2.99 jailbreak app that you'll want to, ahem...explore. It brings metadata editing capability to the iPhone, and allows users to edit the tags for music, podcasts, videos, and more. It even lets users locally edit tags for music downloaded from iTunes match.
Spotify, the world's top music-streaming service, on Thursday announced its desktop apps will be soon getting Musixmatch-powered lyrics engine, making it easy for music lovers to access song lyrics on their Mac or Windows PCs and sing along to their favorite tracks.
Established in early 2010 by Massimo Ciociola and a group of co-founders, the startup, which has offices in Italy's Bologna, UK's London and US's New York, has more than seven million lyrics in 38 languages.
In addition to Spotify integration, Musixmatch is also available as a standalone iPhone and iPad application, available at no cost in the App Store.
Google's music locker in the cloud, called Play Music, has just outsmarted every rival service out there by more than doubling its storage limit, letting you store 50,000 songs in the cloud as opposed to the previous 20,000-song limit.
You don't even have to be subscribed to the $9.99 per month Google Play Music All Access subscription service, meaning everyone can take advantage of this offer immediately, without upgrading their Drive storage.
The change, effective immediately, gives Google Play Music more competitive footing against Apple's scan-and-match $25 per year iTunes Match service that supports storing up to 25,000 user-uploaded songs in iCloud (more if songs are purchased from the iTunes Store).
Apple appears to have acquired London-based maker of audio plug-ins and effects, Camel Audio, signaling its intent to bolster its own professional audio software such as Logic Pro X and the consumer-focused music making app GarageBand.
As noted by MacRumors, the revelation came indirectly via a change in the company's listing on the UK government’s Companies House website.
Ahead of a rumored revamp of the Beats Music service it had obtained as part of its $3 billion acquisition of Beats Electronics, Apple is now hiring people with a background in music and pop culture commentary, Music Ally reported Monday.
The company is looking to hire a London-based individual with “a specific expertise in music journalism” who must be a “seasoned writer with broad pop culture background.”
Faded is a free jailbreak tweak that adds a subtle fade effect to music tracks played with the stock Music app found in iOS. It aims to bring an end to the abrupt pauses and plays that normally occur when pausing, playing, and changing tracks on your iPhone.